Mary Durack is remembered as one of Australia's most versatile writers and also as one of the best loved and most highly honored. Her published works number in the hundreds and cover a variety of genres--history, documentary, fiction, poetry, children's stories, drama, radio plays and talks, reviews, articles, lectures, and journalism. Perhaps more than any other white Australian writer she formed deep friendships with and wrote with great understanding and compassion about the indigenous Australians--the Aborigines. She also gave her time unstintingly to literary and artistic causes, writers' groups, and individual writers.

Durack was born in Adelaide, South Australia, on 20 February 1913, the second child and eldest daughter of Michael Patrick Durack and Bessie Ida Muriel Johnstone Durack. Bessie Durack was a third-generation South Australian and the youngest of seven children in the respectable and affluent Anglican Johnstone family. She was eighteen years younger than her husband, who was...